


renascence; if only you could see the stars

by thursday_night



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Adora and Korra are literally the same person, Angst, BAMF Asami Sato, BAMF Catra, BAMF Korra, BAMF Kuvira, Catra (She-Ra) Redemption, Crack Treated Seriously, Crossover, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, I like writing the villains hush, I'm Bad At Tagging, Kuvira (Avatar) Redemption, M/M, Makorra besties, Outer Space, Redemption, Spirit World (Avatar), Wish me luck, and I'm winging this, no beta we die like hiroshi, redemption everywhere
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-25 01:28:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30081384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thursday_night/pseuds/thursday_night
Summary: There's something comforting about the darkness around them, something she couldn't justify beyond emotion. She thought it might be because the stars had always seemed so overwhelming before, like civilization, threat perpetually just out of reach. Here, there were no qualms about their isolation. They were wholly, truly alone. Korra liked to imagine it meant they were safe, that nothing could surprise them when everything before them was open and empty. Kuvira, ever the pragmatist, told her it only meant that whatever contact they would be receiving would certainly be foreign. And maybe that thought was terrifying, but she wouldn't dwell on it. She'd focus on food, water, and communication. Kuvira would focus on getting them home. And they would ignore the very real possibility that they weren't alone in the universe. That there was something lurking beyond the shadowless husks of planets and dying stars, something swallowing the universe and leaving it bare.Spirits, she wishes she was dealing with politicians instead.Or, Korra and Kuvira are stuck on an ancient ship, unknowingly approaching Horde Prime, and dealing with their issues toward one another and the prospect of life beyond their home.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Bolin/Opal (Avatar), Jinora/Kai (Avatar), Korra/Asami Sato, Lin Beifong/Kya II, Varrick/Zhu Li Moon
Comments: 3
Kudos: 16





	renascence; if only you could see the stars

**Author's Note:**

> This is less a fully fledged idea and more a writing practice for me. I'm not a native English speaker and I was taught that storytelling was a great way of bolstering my fluidity and characterization, so here I am! Though I intend on taking this story as far as I can, it might be a bit of a slow and rocky start. So, any advice would be greatly appreciated! 
> 
> All the best, Thursday :)

**I. Flickers after the Reels have Rolled**

**prologue**

* * *

As it happened, she watched the stars fade away before she could let out the scream that had lodged itself in her throat. Choking her before the steadily approaching black ever got the chance to.

A flicker of a second is all it took for her to think of Zaheer. 

The burn in her lungs, the ache in her muscles, the dark spots stripping her vision away while he bled her dry. She was on her knees, gasping, crying out for someone- Asami, Lin, _Mom_ , her mind supplied her vaguely- feeling the burn begin at the bottom of her chest rise slowly, painstakingly with each heaving lungful she forced down the thinning strip of her throat. Her fingers ached where they grabbed at something sharp, cold, and metallic- metal, fuck, _fuck_ \- and she dimly recognized the sweat pooling down her back despite the sudden cold snap. Both leaving her racked with violent chills. Her vision danced with black and the blur of white and gray and fading blue, swirls of air and cloth and the fading sky. Something pricked at the back of her head, a weight around her shoulders and the soft warmth that followed it, but before she could make sense of it, the earth lurched. Or rather, whatever it was that she was in lurched. This mecha or this ship. Fro what she could gather behind her clouding senses, any earth around felt impossibly distant.

Asami had questioningly called it a cosmonautical mecha beneath her tone of reverence, fingers gliding over the surface in awe. Varrick had laughed excitedly and proclaimed it was a spaceship-”It’s like an airship, but for space! A _**space**_ ship, hah! Ping, get that patent going, I want the trademarks for this thing squared out and on my desk by this weekend.” 

Neither had actually known what it was beside that it was weathered, covered in vines, and had the markings of a system of planets, much like they imagined their own looked like, carved into it alongside obscure symbols that could’ve meant any number of things. Who’d built it, where it had come from, where it was meant to go- questions neither explained by the drawing and none anyone had answers to regardless of the etching. 

It had been a group of students who’d found it in the deadzone of scarred land miles outside of Omashu, the ship encased in a split of wild green that jutted out oddly around the healing strip of earth, the area still disfigured by the hundred year war, even decades after its end. The area hadn’t been touched much at all, not since well before the war, barring raining fire from an airship, in any case. And Korra had recognized it dimly from her visions of Wan. The area still marred when he’d crossed it millennia ago, but considerably more vibrant and plush with vegetation then. 

The only other harbinger of activity besides the strangely misplaced greenery being the shifted earth beneath the ship. But the vines hadn’t been disturbed greatly and they’d chalked it up to one of the students being overeager about the discovery and trying to move it for themselves. Whether or not they’d tried hadn’t mattered, since not hours after it’s discovery it had let out a sharp, piercing sound. Second only in strength to the massive pulse of (what their resident geniuses assumed was) electromagnetic energy that had radiated from it. It had fried Omashu’s electrical grid within minutes, plunging the city into darkness and seeding some abrupt chaos in the hours proceeding the blip. It had taken a week before they could get a few of the public light fixtures functional again. The city still hadn’t had their grid up completely last she’d been there.

Su had been a grand help in the matter regardless, chopping away what might’ve been months to the grid’s revival, taking time away from the rebuilding of Zaofu’s domes and newer pockets and taking Bataar Jr. along for his technological expertise as part of his penance to the world. Fix what he’d destroyed, mend what he’d shattered, take the time to help the world heal, and maybe then would he be forgiven beyond just word of tongue from his mother, the only one who truly seemed to want her son within arms reach (without chains, that was). Though Korra couldn’t blame her, as much as it angered her to have to see him every time she ran into the Matriarch. Spirits knew how much her parents had latched onto her after she’d been poisoned. 

Bolin had come to her often enough crying because _Opal_ had been crying from the man’s presence, her friend unsure of how to comfort his partner or even attempt interaction with Bataar himself (hostile, though Bolin never had a bone for it, or gentle alike) after the elder Beifong had threatened his life and broken his partner’s heart. She hadn’t much of a space for words, but she held him, Opal too, whenever they were in Republic City. Usually one or both of them ended up asleep with her as their pillow, but she never really minded it. It made her heart ache more than it did her body any damage. There weren’t many days where Opal wouldn’t wake up puffy eyed and quiet and Bolin’s actions and speech wouldn’t start out dulled and eerily lifeless. The empty shells of near-invariable, opulent vibrancy a sharper stab to her chest than any strike a sword or dagger could ever render. 

She took time during every visit she made to Zaofu to drag the two with her on Juicy to visit Kyoshi Island for a few hours. The two almost always spent the day singing awfully- though she imagined it was purposeful on their part- on a small karaoke stage as she nursed a small cup of Baijiu for her troubles, albeit with a smile and blinking warmth in her chest that rivalled whatever headache would inevitably barrage her when she woke up the next morning. Pabu usually spent the time nipping at her ear until it was red, and she always ended up carrying Bolin because both him and Opal (the former being the lightweight) would end up flushed with alcohol and unmistakably blitzed. But the ache in her shoulders and the pads of her feet were welcome pains for the thin moments of happiness she could afford the couple. She’d been one of the few world leaders to vote for Bataar’s penance rather than imprisonment. The least she could do was afford them some modicum of joy in the months following the pain and fatigue of the battle. 

It had been Bataar Jr., in fact, who’d led the accompanying Asami and Varrick to the theory that the machine had in fact come from outside their planet, something about the scorched frame and the surrounding crater’s berth. She hadn’t paid much attention the first time he’d told her, but Asami and Varrick had listened intently each time he recounted his observations. Su Yin, who’d been obligated to accompany him as he’d been made her mandated charge, confirmed the suspicions when she’d taken notice of thin streaks of matter from a meteorite scratched into the surface of the ship. The flakes of rock and metal were old, older than any the woman had ever come in contact with, and they were ready to crumble to dust the moment she’d slowly bent them out of the ship’s frame. 

The machine itself had been likewise made of a metal that none of them had ever encountered before, any grains of earth wholly absent from the surrounding plates. Up until that point, Platinum had been the purest manufactured metal. But even _it_ seemed more bendable than whatever comprised the ship’s structural makeup. 

The thing had been near hulking, far larger than any Satoplane Future Industries currently had rolling out of it’s assembly line, but still a fair bit away from nearing the mass of their smallest police airship. It was fully metallic like one, but the newest models of the airships still had obtrusive rudders and various wings fashioned around sporadically- _(“No, not randomly at all. It’s actually incredible how we’ve lent flight to such a massive machine with something as little as mobile strips of metal around the hull and flanks. I wonder how far we can actually take them, maybe be even larger Satoplanes-” the heiress had told her one night in her office, when Korra had flown in through her window with takeout from Joro’s and a silly little grin over her partner’s flawlessly beautiful_ “I’m pondering concepts far beyond your wildest imagination” _face- bottom lip between her teeth, eyes lidded, dimples resting just by the right corner of her lip where Korra loved to kiss her most)_ \- and whatever this machine was, it was sleeker than any type of mecha she’d come across. 

Even the Titan had not been as smooth, it’s frame built with fine metal inlay layered over thicker sheets of platinum and manually thrice-refined steel, leaving wedges they would, in the weeks after the battle, come to find caked in rubble, ash, and chunks of sinew and blood, congealed with time. All alongside marks from plasma welding tools and more harried, angry bending marring the behemoth that had laid the United Republic to waste not a year and a half beforehand. The imperfect perfection of the towering mecha’s metalwork had not made it any less formidable- terrifying, visceral. And neither did the sleek shine on this ship, the apparent lack of seams, diminish the worry simmering below the curiosity Korra had felt upon first seeing it.

It had only been a week ago that she’d been returning from a diplomatic procession to one of the newly budding provinces of Ba Sing Se. Wu had been a reluctantly tolerable bundle of energy, Mako matching the ex-prince’s excitement with his own general temperament hit by hit, and Ikki had been stuck to her side. Taking the diplomatic mission as seriously as she’d taken her duty in training the cropping field of novice airbenders, with Tenzin and Bumi still securing the remaining fringe groups of Earth Empire loyalists and Red Lotus affiliates. 

_The realisation that they’d still lingered in droves, hidden away where she couldn’t see them for years, had left her locked in her old room on Air Temple Island for days, with Asami laying by her side and holding her with the time she’d taken off from work (though Korra had tried to convince her against it). Kya and Lin had taken shifts alongside the heiress, both ensuring she actually ate and slept and proffering her with open confidence, a sense of protection. None of them would've let anything happen to her and she in turn, Korra knew that well enough, it still hadn’t helped the anxiety she’d slowly had to work herself through that week._

Ikki had taken a keen interest in exploration like her late-grandfather and in, oddly enough, politics. Branching away from her brothers’ and sister’s side and choosing instead to begin travelling the world with her bison (“Everyone, time to officially meet the greatest bison that you’ll ever see, Blueberry Spicehead!”) and Opal (having decided in the few months prior the ship’s discovery to stay away from Zaofu momentarily). The two had taken to assisting new heads of state and rallying the younger generations of people into placing value in an election based system of governance. As far as Ikki had told her, it was the older groups that seemed the most hesitant of the shift. Though, she'd already gleamed as much from the backlash that had come at after her announcement about assisting Wu with dissolving the monarchy.

Kai, without a partner and in tentative desire of some momentary stability, had taken Ikki’s place at Jinora’s side for the remainder of reconstruction. Though Korra knew well enough that the two took time to flit around the continent whenever they could squirrel away some time, Pema none the wiser with groups of younger airbenders and acolytes occupying her time. 

The diplomatic mission itself had left her on edge, more so than her other trips to Ba Sing Se. Though the reason for the mission itself was nothing but petty rivalry. The Gan Jin province hadn’t been so willing to concede with the prospect of an intranational government, not when the Zhang province had elected Zhin-Tsu as their representative. The man was a bumbling idiot, if she had to say as much in so many words, but he was kind and loyal to his citizens. For as much as she’d been hesitant at the choice, the man had been elected fairly by his citizens. She had no place to question the decision so early on in the formation of the governmental body, and neither did Gan Jin. 

The Gan Jin candidates had deemed him too posterous, too easily dependent on heart rather than mind, and had put aside petty differences risen between their own campaigns to protest the man’s election. Though they had no jurisdiction over their neighboring provinces vote, it didn’t keep them from protesting with more than just electoral delay. They’d closed off their own main trade routes, using the harbor for their own province and bottleneck-ing any hope for open trade in Zhang. It had taken weeks for them to even accept the United Republic’s proposal for a sit down, and even with the frequent aid missions carried out by the airbenders, Zhang was suffering for far longer than she could rightly let the political technicalities and necessity for nuance churn at her spirit. Though she’d recognised that their territorial turmoil had existed long before her time, the split in the then-joined tribes occurring some odd forty years before, she’d never really been one for centrism when people’s lives had been on the line needlessly.

She’d spent the last two weeks of the Gan Jin silence holed up in Zhang, protesting the crisis and helping the struggling people with their still developing farmland. It had been sticky, the weeks leading up to the mission and the meeting itself alike. Mako’s shoulder had been a welcome respite whenever she could step out of the stifling council room to breathe and Wu’s general inability to read the room, though she imagined that this time it was for her own benefit, acting as a buffer to the simmering frustration and discomfort with the situation. For as long as she’s been doing it, and it had been long enough, Korra hated talking to politicians. Politics in general left her prickly and agitated on a good day, damn near murderous on a bad one. And it just so happened that the day she’d finally returned home from the mission she was somewhere in the middle. The mission had been marked by varying degrees of failure and success, the Gan Jin allowing open a thin stream of trade that would keep the Zhang fed but ultimately struggling until Korra could find them a compromise (that didn’t involve her hurling the Gan Jin candidates out of a window). For as much as she worked past her younger temper, the feeling still arose once in a while despite herself. Typically in response to pompous kangaroo-mules with their heads too far up themselves to think of anyone else. 

She’d still been furious to the Fogs and back, but the anger had been subdued significantly in no small part to her friends. Ikki had run her fingers through her hair on the trip home, humming her an old Air Nation hymn that Korra had recognized Pema would sing to Rohan when he was restless. Mako had hunkered down for a game of Pai Sho, handing her a, surprisingly, pleasant cup of Jasmine tea to his own Lavender and betting their thinning stash of fire flakes back and forth on his win. Though, given that her tongue and lips were nearly numb by the end of the trip, she imagined the White lotus guards that had raised her on low (and high) stakes Pai Sho would be proud. Wu had played a calming tune on his tsungi horn, which they still weren’t sure when and where he’d procured it in the last few days of their trip, but had let him use it easily enough. His singing was still questionable at best- despite Mako seemingly warming to it- and yet he was surprisingly deft with instruments.   
  
All the calm that had been worked into her over the trip meant that seeing Varrick walk up the harbor with a shit eating grin just as they docked had left her with a headache but not an immediate need to punch through the hull of the ship. Though that tension was only alleviated at the sight of Asami on his trail, elbowing him when he jumped her face and tried dragging her along to what she now knew was the “miraculously incredible discovery” of the ship. 

At the time she’d just assumed it was another problem that needed fixing and had been seconds away from landing her boot on Varrick somewhere Zhu Li probably wouldn’t have appreciated, though likely would not have disagreed on reason with. She tolerated Varrick, more often than not, liked him a bit even. He was one of the few of her people that had remained in Republic city while reconstruction had been happening, most opting to travel to their respective tribes under the promise of security and housing until the city was built anew. He drove her insane most days, but he was always willing to eat the shirataki noodles, stewed urchins, and blubbered seal jerky that most of her friends couldn’t stomach. Usually she’d have to drag him to Joro’s or Umi’s and away from whatever project he’d thrown himself at for him to actually eat with her (at first at the behest of his wife, then only because she’d grown fond of the outings), but he mused about his dealings in the south whenever he did. Reminding her of the home she’d only really known in her childhood, before the compound. 

She’d seen him after her return to the city, once or twice, in the cornerstone watertribe temple she’d found her second year in the city, sometime before the new Air Nation had begun cropping up. He never really spoke there, oddly subdued, but his presence was a familiarity in the small nook that hardly many bothered to visit besides her and the owner, Yuma. It started a few weeks after the attacks, he’d come in and bow his head in a novel form of conscious respect and leave seconds later. At some point, the visits became longer, and he’d begin to leave only when she did, his tone reverently subdued as they walked to wherever next they were needed, a silent atonement for both. She’d liked to think that he needed the comfort of the South both she and the temple proffered whenever their lives became heavier than anticipated. 

So, in the abject sense, she didn’t hate Varrick. But sometimes the man was more oblivious than he ought to be for a genius. And if Wu was bad at picking up on not so subtle signals about crossed lines and thinly pacified irritation, then Varrick was at least three times as terrible. Because most of the time he actually had good reason to be blabbering. Only no one could ever parse the sense from the nonsense, which meant the whole thing became all shouts and grins and a constant edge of worry that the man had managed to invent or discover something world ending again and they couldn’t do anything about it until he calmed down. But calming him down meant tiring him out, or being Zhu Li. And that man had a boundless store of energy and the President was busy more days than not, leaving them no out from the man’s rapid tirade.

Asami had taken charge though, hip-checking the inventor into Mako who’d immediately placed him in Wu’s hands, letting the two babble about while he greeted Asami and carried a tired Ikki to the awaiting bison from Pema. Asami had greeted her with arms around her waist and her nose buried in the crook of her neck. Pretense of maintaining professionalism in public out the window, Korra had melted where she stood, letting out a shuddering breath and hopping up, allowing Asami’s hands to naturally find their way to her thighs and support her weight with ease. 

Asami had led her away from the dock, quieting Varrick the second time he’d tried to intercept the Avatar, the man looking like he was seconds from spontaneously combusting where he stood, and carrying her body to her awaiting car and then through the front door of Korra’s little apartment in the city. She’d stripped her of her clothes, laid her in her tub, and gently carted her fingers over her skin and hair, kneeling beside the tub with her own hair loose over her shoulders and her eyes smokey from the few tears she had shed holding her girlfriend for the first time in months. Her fingers had worked deftly, with the soft tenderness of a lover but the efficiency and dexterity of an engineer, breaking away the tension that had been weighing her down since the battle, always looming close to her neck with one new repercussion after the other, ready to snap her under the pressure. Asami had told her she’d fallen asleep there in the tub, and she’d only woken up what felt like days later, but had been about fifteen hours, because her throat was parched and Asami had been lightly trailing her fingers along her shoulders. 

The time she’d had to spend with Asami had been growing thinner since their return from the spirit world and the beginning of the reconstruction, the pair seemingly together long enough to only share searing touches or gentle kisses in between trips and mounting political and industrial projects. And she imagined it was one of the reasons she’d spent the morning she’d woken up crying into her partner’s stomach, fingers desperately pulling them closer until they were flush, the soft hold and Asami’s own little trembles enough to keep her from moving for the few hours afterwards. Both had needed the comfort, the familiarity and the proximity. 

Their vacation in the spirit world had been beyond incredible, it had been otherworldly, as silly as the turn of phrase was. It had left Korra floating the months they’d spent together, pulling each other to some new sight that neither knew or huddling behind trees and under groves to paint each other in tentative kisses and soft words, reveling in the affection that was still so novel and intimate. It had felt like an implosion the moment they’d first kissed one another, though now she recalls feeling a soft wave of calm and security rather than any earth shattering deluge of fire. Asami had had recalled feeling the same, she’d told her months after, They’d both been acutely conscious of the time they’d spent together, how they’d spent it, but at the time it had felt like free falling without having to worry about the landing, because it would assuredly be in each other’s arms. They’d both known the time they’d had would be limited, they just hadn’t anticipated their responsibilities becoming as consuming as they’d had.   
  
Asami had taken over the rebuilding of Republic City’s infrastructure, Future Industries merging temporarily with the remaining construction ventures willing to return to the city. For a while it had felt bleak, everyone pushing past fear and grief to put life back into a city once vibrant and bustling. Korra had been around to help with the initial clean-up and reconstruction, but even though they were working on the same thing, Asami and her always ended up on opposite sides of the city. Mostly, she'd spent her time leading groups of benders around for stabilization support and rudimentary frame work. Having a few benders around made things easier to some degree, but since most of the construction and industrial companies had been largely comprised of non-benders, it meant waylaying any of the expedited processes that General Iroh had prepositioned. It was painstakingly tedious, but though it meant working slower, it also meant working safer. Korra had taken the brunt of a falling building before it could take out her group of earthbenders when they’d worked too fast on an already unstable building. None of Asami or Cabbage Corp’s forklifts and cranes suffered such mishaps. 

It was probably one of the more upfront realizations that, up until Republic City’s founding, benders had disproportionately accounted for much of the world's construction. And though the hundred year war had made the desire to hide bending all the more prominent, most benders had still taken the authoritative step in protecting their homes and cities. For the longest time, it was either bender’s fortifying and defending, or nonbenders working the grueling construction and repairs that the Fire Nation had forced onto them. 

Republic city had been founded under the work of benders and nonbenders, but even then their technology had been more primitive. And the skyscrapers and towers had taken the finesse that only a bender could attribute. This was the first time they were working together on equal footing to rebuild. Dimly, she thought she could notice some sense of pride in the workers around her, and she was happy to relinquish duties she knew she couldn’t handle to a more capable nonbender. 

If only Amon could see them now, she'd thought then with surprisingly little bitterness. 

The only moments Korra allowed herself to flit back to Asami were in the lull that followed the hours of digging out bodies from under the rubble. Though they’d evacuated most of the city, there were still pockets of people who lingered. Either because they had family that couldn’t leave, elderly or sick, or because their districts hadn’t received the telegrams and warnings. Those were most of the outer, rural pockets of poor families without most of the connections that the urban centers afforded its citizens. It was a gross oversight Asami and Zhu Li had sworn to repair and had worked tirelessly to remedy promptly. The survivors from those districts had been the first non-contracted citizens to assist in the reconstruction (before the other nations had even thought to send in their own waves of support), clearing out small blocks and streets and using the strength in their numbers to cart supplies between the main constructors and the supply ships from the Fire Nation and Water Tribes. As much help as they were, though, most of them were just looking for their families. Everytime she pulled a child out of the dust and a hollow-eyed mother approached her and asked to check if it was her baby, she had to physically keep herself from sinking into the ground and retching. 

Asami kept her from falling apart every time she practically ran to her after having to carry too many bodies- mothers, fathers, children- to the steadily crowding sites for the dead, where they were washed and wrapped, awaiting retrieval or burial. For a reason she couldn’t place, the spirits had lingered there longest, floating between mourners and dead alike, quiet in what Jinora had said was likely their own form of mourning. The energy in the city had been subdued, despite the third portal’s added fluctuations, and the spirits mimicked the lull in violent energy. Everything was quiet, even the earth.

Idly, Korra wondered if Zaheer could feel the muffling of the spiritual energy, if he mourned for it in his chains where she mourned for it’s cause in the soot and rubble. 

It was the thought of Zaheer that lurched her back to the present, her eyes wild as they flitted around the darkness that had welcomed her sight. She registered the quiet, near imperceptible, hum below her, then the cold against her back, then the warmth above her. She made an effort to sit up, feeling her body ache as she pushed off the floor of the ship and into a sort-of half stand, kneeling and in the motion of standing. Though it was aborted the moment her eyes registered the other lump a few paces away from her, rising and falling in steady breaths. The jacket around her made more sense, suddenly.

They’d moved the ship to Zaofu, she recalled, and Varrick had made the suggestion that they take advantage of their company and bring in another mind while they were in the area since Zhu Li couldn’t afford to make the trip to continue to offer any physical help. The group had been adamantly against the motion, Bataar and Su Yin most vocally, but Korra had supported it. She’d been the only one outside of Varrick to vote for Kuvira’s assistance. Bataar had, reluctantly, informed them, after a tense debate between Varrick and Su Yin, that most of his engineering was done in tandem with Kuvira. And Asami, in support of Korra’s decision (largely in part to the fact that it was _Korra’s_ decision), affirmed that any and all help would be best if they were to figure out what had caused the pulse of energy and if there was anything else they needed to be concerned about. It was a tense exchange of veiled insults and emotions, but quickly thereafter, Kuvira was standing with them in cuffs. 

She was also lying in front of Korra now, stirring as the ship jolted abruptly and sent Korra crashing back to the ground with a groan. 

“You alright there, Avatar?”

Kuvira’s voice didn’t have the bite that usually accompanied words meant against Korra, and Korra had taken advantage of the breath she had to force back into herself to gather her thoughts and her response. She had been in support of Kuvira’s assistance because she thought the woman had something to offer them, and she in turn wanted to offer Kuvira the same chance offered to Bataar. Kuvira’s sentencing was long and rightly harsh, her wounds as the face and force of the Empire running far deeper than Bataar’s. But she’d been given absolutely no leeway, no chance for rehabilitation, and the woman had taken it all in stride. Korra, for her part, couldn’t stomach it. She hated Kuvira, there was no denying it, but she felt a sympathy for the woman she hadn’t felt for Zaheer. Neither had she felt it with Unalaq or Amon. 

Kuvira was only two years older than her, maybe that had something to do with it. But, she hadn’t been lying when she spoke of their similarities, and she reckons that must mean something more. She thinks, maybe, that if they’d both grown up together, she’d have seen her as a friend, someone who understood her, maybe. If they’d known one another before Zaheer and the Empire, before their brief interactions in Zaofu, maybe things could’ve been different. Korra didn’t have any misconceptions about the tenacity Kuvira had, changing her mind was probably a lot like trying to change her own mind at sixteen, but with the added aspect of a maturity taught by a world around brilliancy from all across the globe. They’d grown up similarly, limited to the walls of their homes and likely curious about the world outside of them. But where Korra had no choice in her stay and had been forbidden from interacting with what few outsiders came to the compound (mostly suppliers and agents stationed outside the compound), Kuvira had no such restrictions.

Korra didn’t know what had kept Kuvira in Zaofu, and didn't know much about her upbringing, but she knew enough to recognize that she was as stubborn as her. And had had no one to butt heads against that wouldn’t give at the slightest force. Korra had her masters, and they took very little of her hotheaded lip with passivity, but they were never her brand of stubborn. Su Yin seemed the type to let stubbornness and anger pass away on their own, something that felt like Zen intermingled with the ever present bite of a Beifong. Without Mako and Tenzin, Lin, and _Toph_ , even, Korra doubts she would’ve been able to work through her own issues with the prospect of giving up. The idea that stepping back wasn’t a sign of weakness but of strength. Maybe if they’d known each other longer, Korra could’ve been Kuvira’s standstill, the rock she punched whenever the world felt unfair and the one who punched her back and in turn held out a hand to pick her up, to remind her she was stronger than the world.

One thing she could be certain of, everyone could change, why couldn't Kuvira?

Maybe's, what if's, it was all conjecture anyway. And it didn’t matter, not really. They didn’t have that history, that form of support and trust. Not yet, maybe never.

So, sitting up, leaning against the wall furthest Kuvira, and responding that she was “Fine enough” didn’t feel like any consolation of trust. Mayhaps a gray area, then, because Kuvira nodded once before turning her eyes towards the darkened console and rose on shaky legs to approach it. And Korra, her own legs wobbly, rushed to catch her before the woman fell over, before leading her to the console in a mutual silence. 

Maybe they weren’t friends, maybe they never would be, but right now it wouldn’t do to dwell on their shared resentment and trauma, whatever it was that they held against the other. Not just yet.

 _Now_ they needed to focus on getting home. 

If the firm pressure around her shoulders as the two approached the window that opened into an open, infinite black was anything to go by, she thinks the two of them at least had their minds on the same idea. It was only a matter of making good on it, now. 

**Author's Note:**

> So, there's that little prologue! My way of recapping the last two years on our lovely home planet, who's name I'm still contemplating, and setting up the beginnings of our adventure! Next up, possibly, the world contemplates a new universe and the absence of their Avatar, Korra and Kuvira take stock of their situation, and a spirit pops by for a quick visit.


End file.
